McLaren: Apologies to Norris and Ricciardo

McLaren: Apologies to Norris and Ricciardo

NewsDesk 2 min read

McLaren: Apologies to Norris and RicciardoMcLaren apologized to its drivers after a horrible 2022 Canadian Grand Prix, saw them both finish out of the points, lacking pace on an error-marred Sunday.

The promised renaissance of the Woking-based outfit, once a great Formula 1 team, is yet to materialize this year, after such promise during pre-season testing.

Qualifying in Montreal was mixed, as Daniel Ricciardo out-qualified Lando Norris in ninth, as the latter was only good for 14th after technical problems with his MCL36.

On race day, both drivers struggled with lack of pace, unable to make inroads towards points’ scoring positions, with Ricciardo falling back to 11th, while Norris finished a place down from where he started, the Briton particularly suffering from a botched pit stop during the race.

McLaren team boss, Andreas Seidl, lamented a tough race in Canada, and said: “A very disappointing Sunday afternoon for us here in Montréal.

“It’s been a tough weekend in general, with the car lacking pace, having reliability issues and suffering an operational issue in the double-shuffle pitstop during the Virtual Safety Car period.

“We have to acknowledge our competitors did a better job and therefore we didn’t deserve points today,” a realistic Seidl admitted.

“We didn’t give Lando or Daniel the package they deserved today, so we have to offer them an apology,” the German went on. “My thanks to our team here at the track, back in the factory and our colleagues at HPP for their efforts over the whole of this long-haul double-header.

“We also have to use this as an opportunity to learn, and come back stronger in two weeks for our home race at Silverstone,” he concluded.

Not the best Sunday, said Ricciardo

Ricciardo, who has shown better performance in Canada as well as Azerbaijan before that, said: “Unfortunately, not the best Sunday for us.

“We simply didn’t have the pace, and then had to manage a few other things as well. That was tough, it just put us too far out of contention.

“So, otherwise, we’ve got to have a look, see where we can go better, and then just clean a few things up,” the Australian concluded.

Norris added: “We were unlucky today in many places, and also just didn’t have the pace to race and overtake the people we wanted to race against.

“It was very difficult to overtake in general and that hurt our pace. We simply couldn’t get into the positions we wanted to be in.

“I think the pace wasn’t too bad, still not good enough, but not too bad, just the fact we couldn’t overtake, hurt us badly today,” Norris reflected.

“We’ve got work to do. There were mistakes from my side, mistakes from the team’s behalf and we’ll just need to step back, refresh, go again and do a much better job in the next one,” the 22-year-old concluded.